“I want to stay with her,” Tara said. Amour was tough, but God, Dr. Riley was right. The poor girl had just been assaulted in her own house. Tara might hate hospitals with the red-hot intensity of a thousand fiery suns, but… “I don’t want her to be alone. Plus, once Sansone finds out he didn’t kill her, who knows what he might try to do.”
Garza swapped looks with Isabella, but Tara didn’t know either detective well enough to read between the unspoken lines. “Let’s take this one step at a time. We have to prove it was Sansone first. Tess, do you think Amour is up for an interview? The sooner we do this, the sooner we can start figuring out who hurt her.”
“It’ll have to be quick, and if she gets too overwhelmed, we’ll have to cut it off. I know she’s tough, but I also know I don’t need to remind you she’s had a hell of a night.”
“Understood,” Isabella said. Turning toward Xander, she asked, “You sticking around to sharpen your victim interview skills, Matthews?”
“Yes, ma’am.” His nod sent the weirdest shot of relief through Tara’s chest. “I’d like to see this one through, as long as that’s alright with you.”
Garza jerked his chin. “Never hurts to learn, but do us a favor, both of you, and let us do our job? This case in under Intelligence’s jurisdiction until we can make an arrest.”
Tara bristled, but before she could tell Tall, Dark, and Broody exactly where he could shove his jurisdiction, Isabella said, “I think what Garza, here, is trying to say in his own charming way is, we really have to be sure we do this by the book. Especially if Sansone is involved. The last thing we want to do is give his lawyer any sort of technicality to hang a dismissal on.”
And Sansone’s attorney was the slimiest defense lawyer dirty money could buy. Shit. “Understood,” Tara muttered.
“Okay,” Dr. Riley said, leading them toward an exam room at the far end of the hallway. “I’ll stick to the background in case she needs anything. Try to be quick?”
“Of course,” Isabella promised. Turning toward Tara, she said, “You’re good for this, right?”
Tara nodded even though her heart was screaming to the contrary. “I have to be. Amour needs an advocate. I won’t let her down.”
With that, she headed past the exam room door and slid the privacy curtain aside. Her pulse took an immediate roller coaster ride at the sight of Amour on the gurney in the center of the room, the dim lights casting dark shadows beneath her eyes, deepening the bruises already forming there. Her blond hair was matted and pulled back, yielding to the mass of gauze covering the right side of her face, and Tara choked down the noise her throat wanted to make.
“Hey, Amour,” she murmured, marshaling her voice to steadiness she sure as shit didn’t feel. “Are you up for visitors?”
The young woman blinked her eyes open, looking startled. “Tara?”
“It’s me,” Tara assured her, moving swiftly to the gurney to scoop up Amour’s hand. Damn it, she was trembling. “I’m right here with Detectives Walker and Garza, from Intelligence. Do you remember them?”
Amour bit her lip. “Yeah.” Her eyes darted to Xander, who had hung back behind Isabella. “I remember you, too. You were there. Holding my head, after.”
Xander took one step forward, but still stayed far from Amour’s personal space. “Yes, ma’am. Officer Matthews. Would it be okay with you if I stay while you talk to the detectives? I’d really like to make sure you’re alright.”
“Oh.” Amour blinked, then lifted a too-thin shoulder partway before letting it drop. “Sure, I guess. I’m fine, but whatever.”
“You gave us a bit of a scare, kid,” Garza said as he moved to Amour’s other side, his gruff demeanor replaced by a look of empathy so deep, it shocked Tara. “How are you feeling?”
“I just want to get this over with,” she said, her hand starting to shake again despite the steel she’d tried to put in her voice.
A frown flickered over Garza’s face, and yeah, that made two of them. “Okay. Can you tell us what happened?”
“I don’t remember anything,” Amour said, her words nearly crashing into Garza’s, and okay, something about this didn’t wash.
“You just said you remember Officer Matthews,” Tara pointed out, ignoring the way Garza’s jaw tightened beneath his five o’clock shadow. For Chrissake, she’d graduated in the top ten in her class at Stanford. She wasn’t going to ask anything that would give Sansone’s lawyer, as scummy as the guy was, an advantage.
Amour paused. “I don’t remember anything about the guy who did this.”
“Except that it was a guy,” Isabella said. Gently, she added, “Amour, we want to help you.”
“Well, you can’t,” she said, her eyes filling with angry tears, and in that instant, it clicked.
“He threatened you.”
At Amour’s wide-eyed stare in reply, Tara continued, “Amour, listen to me. If Sansone did this to you, we can go to the judge and get an order of protection. With your testimony, we can—”
“It wasn’t him.”
Tara tried again. “Amour, I know you’re—”
“Tara, you’re not listening. It wasn’t him.”
“But someone threatened you,” Garza said, and Amour finally eked out a tiny nod.
“This guy was big. Bigger than Sansone. Like you.” Her stare flickered over Garza before dropping to the thin blanket draped over her lap. The detective had to be six foot two, and he’d definitely eaten his Wheaties as a kid, because damn, he wasn’t coming up short in the muscles department. “I was in the kitchen, getting a drink. I’ve been working a lot of late nights, so I wanted to crash early, but then I heard footsteps on the porch. I barely had time to turn around before the door came crashing in.”
Amour paused for a shaky breath. “I ran to my bedroom. I know it was dumb, but he was blocking the front door, so it’s not like I could get out that way, and my phone was on my nightstand, charging. He caught me before I could get to it, though.”
This time, her pause lapsed into silence, which Garza filled with, “You’re doing great, Amour. This is giving us a really good idea of what happened.”
Whether the encouragement worked or she just wanted to be done with her statement, Tara couldn’t tell. But Amour kept going. “He grabbed me by the tops of my arms and hit me once in the face, really hard. I was so surprised, I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t even scream. It was like I was just stuck there. So stupid.”
“That’s a very common reaction,” Isabella offered gently. “And it’s very likely that he hit you for just that reason—because he knew you’d probably freeze. Did you manage to get a good look at him?”
“No.” She shrugged. “He was wearing a ski mask and a hoodie. Maybe jeans? I don’t remember.”
“That’s okay,” Garza said. “What about his hands? Could you tell what color his skin was?”
Recognition lit Amour’s eyes, and Tara squeezed her fingers in encouragement. “He was wearing gloves, but when he grabbed me, the cuffs of his hoodie slid up a little. He was white, and I could see a tattoo. Not a lot, but it had numbers. What do you call them, when you keep count with those lines?”